33 Pound Mushroom Found in China
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Dedicated to fighting authoritarianism, bigotry, greed, corruption, climate change denial, white supremacy, racism, stupidity and general evil, as well as the exploration of interesting ideas and conspiracy theories including 9/11, UFOs, ET's, the paranormal and the general unknown.
"Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had," Greenwald said in an interview with the Argentinean paper La Nacion. "The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare."
So-- what is it? Info on 9/11? On ETs? One can only hope...It's the most explicit confirmation yet that among the documents Snowden sneaked out of the NSA are some that could harm the U.S. and that these are being used as leverage against the United States as the government seeks his arrest and extradition. It's unclear what actions would trigger such an indiscriminate, mass leak, and who would authorize or execute it.
For more than 40 years, we've been spending excessive amounts of money on a "war" that makes no sense. And we've not only engaged the military to fight it overseas, we've turned out own police forces into para-military forces so we can "fight" it on our own soil. I'm talking about the War on Drugs, of course. Lately, we've merged this war with an equally amorphous concept called the the War on Terror. And the result is an endless build-up of a massive police apparatus. (snip)
If there's ever been a bigger boondoggle, I don't know what it is. And even if things go well with comprehensive immigration reform we're going to expand this militarization on our border a hundred fold, with billions and billions of dollars being spent on new toys and police personnel. That has become the price of even the slightest expansion of a positive function of government.
I have to wonder though if there isn't a huge irony here. I've always thought that when you see government as having few legitimate functions beyond a military to protect the nation from foreign threat and a justice system to enforce contracts and police the citizens, all the state's power and money would logically flow to those functions. In other words, a pure libertarian system is highly likely to lead to a police state.
This is not because libertarians want such a thing, of course. It's because human nature dictates that if you build it, they will use it. And when you have created an environment, as Republicans have over the past 40 years, in which the only unquestionable responsibility of government is police and military --- and the money spent toward those functions is deemed to be sacred --- well, it stands to reason those institutions will grow exponentially as the rest of the government shrinks. That's what's happening right now.
While Head Start and Meals on Wheels are starved of funds, the security state grows by leaps and bounds. Hardcore conservatives are fine with that. They are authoritarians by choice. But the last thing libertarians want is a police state. And yet their philosophy may inevitably leads the nation to create one.More on Warrior Cops and Radley Balko's book here.
A return to the Moon could be hampered by dust, a poorly-understood threat to machines and people alike, according to a presentation at a space conference that ended Friday.
Simulations by scientists in Britain and France show that in key zones of Earth’s satellite, dust kicked up by a landing or exploration gains an electrostatic force that briefly overcomes lunar gravity, it heard.
As a result, the dust lingers high above the surface, presenting a thin grey cloud of fine, sticky, abrasive particles that hamper visibility, coat solar panels and threaten moving parts, they said.
Some kinds of lunar dust are laden with iron, presenting a toxicity risk for humans if breathed in, they said.
Farideh Honary, a professor at the University of Lancaster, northwestern England, said lunar dust was already identified as a potential hazard by returning Apollo astronauts.
But only now, with mounting interest in a return to the Moon, were scientists taking a closer look, she told AFP.
“We need to study the dust in much more detail and to do more measurements before (sending) manned missions,” she said by phone.There's really no point in saying how ridiculous the official moon landing story is... and there have been endless excuses why we can't go "back". Like we went there in the first place. But what is this about breathing moon dust? Why would we be breathing moon "air" or anything in it?